Rear Window | Now you see me, now you don´t

Severo Portela

Once again no pasa nada Macau SAR [where nothing happens] is  shaken by the detainment of a high-ranking and high-profile official for corruption. Like a recurrent curse brought by the downfall and long-term sentencing of Public Works secretary Ao Man Long, the former Prosecutor General, Ho Chio Meng, together with his chief of staff and an advisor, is now a suspect of graft, abuse of power, fraud, unlawful economic advantage and forgery of documents, all charges relating to duplicitous insider procurement of public contracts. Let us ignore for now the suspected corruption case, in itself a case study on how an alleged criminal activity run while on duty would not spill or taint the judicial responsibilities of MSAR’s legal custodian.
It is common sense to say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it…one way or another. However only time can tell whether a fact or facts deserve to ascend in the Marx realms of tragedy or farce.
Ho Chio Meng will be confronted with the same void that prevented Ao Man Long from accessing his fundamental right of appeal, since there is no court hierarchically superior to the Court of Final Appeal (TUI)… the exact court that took the preventive measures against Ho.
Macau seems to not have considered the possibility of a second set of graft proceedings involving high-ranking officials; or perhaps the SAR had not enough political weight to take Ao Man Long’s diminished rights of appeal another step further to amend the judiciary system. But HCM situation is far more complex.
Obviously aware of the three-judge final appeal TUI, Ho Chio Meng’s lawyers took another course of action and put up a habeas corpus claim of an illegal detention. A collective of judges dismissed the claim, apparently suggesting Ho would have done better if his defense were to appeal directly against the preventive custody…the one course of action they chose to avoid because the appeal would be judged by the judges who took the preventive measures.
Looks like a cul-de-sac… but it can become a much more ambiguous Catch 22. MDT sources say HCM’s argument refers to the Statute of the Judiciary Magistrates that does not allow any magistrate to be subjected to preventive custody before being formally accused. TUI seems to be considering that HCM is not a magistrate since he was appointed coordinator of a committee on legal studies under the umbrella of the Public Prosecutions Office, back in February, 2015. This direction of argument for HCM not retaining his position as magistrate – and he was not on a leave of absence without pay – may have passed muster if the now jailed Prosecutor had not been appointed as the MP representative in the International Association of Prosecutors annual conference, in September, 2015. The PRC, Macau SAR and Hong Kong SAR are organizational members.
As to the case of corruption, we can highlight some aspects that largely test our capacity for belief and make us wonder if something might be missing in the intrigue to allow us to fully understand all of its dimensions.
The truth is that nobody seems to be truly surprised by the downfall of the former Prosecutor who once dared to present himself as a strong challenger for Chief Executive. On the back of the Ao Man Long prosecution, in 2009 Ho Chio Meng went as far as soliciting supporters and working up a kind of local media frenzy.
I repeat: nobody seems to be truly surprised by the HCM downfall, as no one seems to believe that he went down for some commissions. Influence peddling seems to be the name of the game. Now you see me, now you don’t.
P.S: The geometry of the numbers: 10 culprits over 10 years managed to syphon 44 million from 2000 contracts worth MOP167 million. Nobody noticed? By Macau standards, embarrassing low, says NMA’s Scott Chiang.